Lisey's Story(64)

It didn't happen and in another three seconds or so, her eyes re-adapted to the low light. Now she could see him again, tall and straight, grave and still, standing there in the angle of the big building and the small one. With something at his feet. Some kind of square package. It could have been a suitcase.

Good God, he doesn't think he can get all of Scott's papers in there, does he? she thought, and took another cautious step to her left, holding the silver spade so tightly that her fists throbbed. "Zack, is that you?" Another step. Two. Three.

She heard a car coming and understood that its headlights were going to sweep the yard, revealing him fully. When that happened, he would leap at her. She swung the silver spade back over her shoulder just as she had in August of 1988, finishing her windup as the approaching car breasted Sugar Top Hill, flooding her yard with momentary light and revealing the power-mower she herself had left in the angle of the barn and the shed. The shadow of its handle leaped upward on the side of the barn, then faded as the car's headlights faded. Once more the lawnmower could have been a man with a suitcase at his feet, she supposed, although once you'd seen the truth... In a horror movie, she thought, this is where the monster would leap out of the darkness and grab me. Just as I'm starting to relax.

Nothing leaped out to grab her, but Lisey didn't think it would hurt to take the silver spade inside with her, if only for good luck. Carrying it in one hand now, down by the collar where the shaft met the silver scoop, Lisey went to call Norris Ridgewick, the Castle County Sheriff.

VII. Lisey and The Law

(Obsession and The Exhausted Mind)

1

The woman who took Lisey's call identified herself as Communications Officer Soames and said she couldn't put Lisey through to Sheriff Ridgewick, because Sheriff Ridgewick had been married the week before. He and his new bride were on the island of Maui, and would be for the next ten days.

"Who can I talk to?" Lisey asked. She didn't like the closeto-strident sound of her voice, but she understood it. Oh God, did she. This had been one long goddam day.

"Hold on, ma'am," CO Soames said. Then Lisey was in limbo with McGruff the Crime Dog, who was talking about Neighborhood Watch groups. Lisey thought this a considerable improvement on the Two Thousand Comatose Strings. After a minute or so of McGruff, a cop with a name Scott would have loved came on the line.

"This is Deputy Andy Clutterbuck, ma'am, how can I help you?"

For the third time that day - third time's the charm, Good Ma would have said, third time pays for all - Lisey introduced herself as Mrs. Scott Landon. Then she told Deputy Clutterbuck a slightly edited version of the Zack McCool story, beginning with the call she had received the previous evening and finishing with the one she'd made tonight, the one that had netted the Jim Dooley name. Clutterbuck contented himself with uh-huhs and variations thereof until she had finished, then asked her who had given her "Zack McCool"'s other, possibly real name.

With a twinge of conscience (tattle-tale tit all the dogs in town come to have a little bit) that caused her a moment of bitter amusement, Lisey gave up the King of the Incunks. She did not call him Woodsmucky.

"Are you going to talk to him, Deputy Clutterbuck?"

"I think that's indicated, don't you?"

"I guess so," Lisey said, wondering what, if anything, Castle County's acting Sheriff could get out of Woodbody that she hadn't been able to pry loose. She supposed there might be something - she'd been pretty mad. She also realized that wasn't what was bothering her. "Will he be arrested?"

"On the basis of what you've told me? Not even close. You might have grounds for a civil action - you'd have to ask your lawyer - but in court I'm sure he'd say that as far as he knew, all this guy Dooley meant to do was show up on your doorstep and try a little high-pressure sales routine. He'd claim not to know anything about dead cats in mailboxes and threats of personal injury...and he'd be telling the truth, based on what you've just said. Right?"

Lisey agreed, rather dispiritedly, that it was right.

"I'm going to want the letter this stalker left," Clutterbuck said, "and I'm going to want the cat. What did you do with the remains?"

"We have a wooden box-thingy attached to the house," Lisey said. She picked up a cigarette, considered it, put it back down again. "My husband had a word for it - my husband had a word for just about everything - but I can't remember for the life of me what it was. Anyway, it keeps the raccoons out of the swill. I put the cat's body in a garbage bag and put the bag in the orlop." Now that she wasn't struggling to find it, Scott's word came effortlessly to mind.

"Uh-huh, uh-huh, do you have a freezer?"

"Yes..." Already dreading what he was going to tell her to do next.

"I want you to put the cat in your freezer, Mrs. Landon. It's perfectly okay to leave it in the bag. Someone will pick it up tomorrow and take it over to Kendall and Jepperson. They're the vets we have our county account with. They'll try to determine a cause of death - "

"It shouldn't be hard," Lisey said. "The mailbox was full of blood."

"Uh-huh. Too bad you didn't take a few Polaroids before you wiped it all up."

"Well excuse me all to hell and gone!" Lisey cried, stung.

"Calm down," Clutterbuck said. Calmly. "I understand that you were upset. Anybody would have been."